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Evaluating in the Real World

Quality isn't a beauty contest

In this module we showed you an easy example. The truth is, it may not always be easy to find the truth about a Web site.

What makes it even more challenging for you is that there are many sites that appear to meet evaluation criteria, but are in fact, not credible. A lot of spoof web sites (like malepregnancy.com) meet every single evaluation criteria on the surface. But when you dig a little deeper and apply the A.S.P.E.C.Ts, you realize it's all glitz.

Evaluating Web sites isn't a beauty contest. Avoid the temptation to automatically think a site is credible because it "looks good." The opposite is just as true -- there are a lot of great sites that aren't flashy or visually appealing. The real beauty of a Web site is how well it meets the evaluation criteria and what kind of ideas and information it provides.

IRIS-42 is an Information Literacy project developed with a grant from the Distance Learning Council of Washington, 2007-2008. Some content, images and activities were inspired by, and/or copied/adapted from TILT: The Texas Information Literacy Tutorial. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the TILT Open Publication License (the latest version: http://tilt.lib.utsystem.edu/yourtilt/).